OrFoxOS combines Firefox OS and Tor on a $25 smartphone

In today's open source roundup: OrFoxOS may offer inexpensive mobile privacy by blending Firefox OS and Tor. Plus: LibreOffice 4.3 released, and video of deathmatch play in the new Unreal Tournament game

Mobile privacy concerns are at a fever pitch right now with all the NSA spying, tracking by advertisers and other privacy violations happening on the Internet. I came across an interesting video that demos a new mobile operating system called OrFoxOS. OrFoxOS combines Firefox OS and Tor to help protect your privacy.

I did some searching and found a GitHub page for OrfoxOS. It looks like it's still very early in development, but it could be a great thing for folks that want mobile anonymity via an inexpensive smartphone. The video indicates that it is running on a $25 Firefox OS prototype phone. Unfortunately, I was not able to find out any more about OrFoxOS. If you have any more information about it, please share it in the comments. I'm very interested in learning more about it and when it might become available.

LibreOffice 4.3 released

The Document Foundation Blog has announced the release of LibreOffice 4.3.

LibreOffice 4.3 offers a large number of improvements and new features, including:

- Document interoperability: support of OOXML Strict, OOXML graphics improvements (DrawingML, theme fonts, preservation of drawing styles and attributes), embedding OOXML files inside another OOXML file, support of 30 new Excel formulas, support of MS Works spreadsheets and databases, and Mac legacy file formats such as ClarisWorks, ClarisResolve, MacWorks, SuperPaint, and more.

- Comment management: comments can now be printed in the document margin, formatted in a better way, and imported and exported – including nested comments – in ODF, DOC, OOXML and RTF documents, for improved productivity and better collaboration.

- Intuitive spreadsheet handling: Calc now allows the performing of several tasks more intuitively, thanks to the smarter highlighting of formulas in cells, the display of the number of selected rows and columns in the status bar, the ability to start editing a cell with the content of the cell above it, and being able to fully select text conversion models by the user.

- 3D models in Impress: support of animated 3D models in the new open glTF format, plus initial support for Collada and kmz files that are found in Google Warehouse, in order to add a fresh new look and animations to keynotes (support of this feature is currently on Windows and Linux versions only).

You can connect with other fans in the Unreal Tournament Forum, and check out the Unreal Engine blog. I'm looking forward to checking out the new UT when it's released, it looks like it's going to be a monster. What's your take on all this? Tell me in the comments below. The opinions expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the views of ITworld.

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Jim Lynch is a technology analyst and online community manager. Jim has written for many leading industry publications over the years.

The opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of InfoWorld, ITworld, CIO.com, IDG Communications, or their parent, subsidiary or affiliated companies.